DOCSLIB.ORG

Naturalism 4 Archive

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Naturalism 4 Archive 1 Naturalism Charles R Pigden What Naturalism Is In Philosophy not only the doctrines but the definitions of the doctrines are subject to dispute. Thus it is with ethical naturalism. My definition, therefore, is personal but not, I hope, idiosyncratic. By naturalism I mean more or less what other philosophers have in mind — though the more and the less will vary from case to case. Naturalism, then, is a cognitivist doctrine (or family of doctrines). It states that moral judgements are propositions, capable of truth and falsity. Moral judgements purport to tell it like it is. Naturalism is thus opposed to non-cognitivism, to emotivism and prescriptivism, which represent moral judgements variously as exclamations, psychological prods and quasi-commands. It is also (in a weak sense) a realist doctrine; that is, it takes some moral judgements to be true. It is thus opposed to the error-theory of J. L. Mackie which agrees that moral judgements make claims that are either true or false, but denies that any of them are true. Morality, for the naturalist, is not a fiction, a mistake or a myth but a body of knowledge, or at least, of information. Finally, naturalism is (in a loose sense) a reductive doctrine. Though there are moral truths (i.e. true propositions) there are no peculiarly moral facts or properties (no distinctively moral states of affairs) over and above the facts and properties that can be specified using non-moral terminology. The contrast here is with 'intuitionist' philosophers such as G.E Moore (1874-1958): 'If I am asked "What is good?", my answer is that good is good and that is the end of the matter. Or if I am asked "How is good to be defined?", my answer is that it cannot be defined and that is all I have to say about it' (Moore, 1903, p. 6). Moore does not mean he cannot tell you what things are good. (He thinks for example that friendship and the contemplation of beauty are good.) No, he is making a metaphysical or ontological point: the goodness of good things consists in their possessing the property of goodness, a basic feature of reality which cannot be further analyzed or explained. Naturalists disagree. For them, goodness can be further analyzed or explained; reduced to something else or identified with some other property. Indeed naturalists think that goodness as Moore conceives it, a unique and sui generis property, does not exist. (And the same goes, naturally, for badness, rightness and wrongness.) But there consensus ends. Naturalists differ as to what good, evil etc. are to be reduced to, and how this reduction is to be carried out. There are hedonistic naturalists who reduce facts about goodness to facts about pleasure and pain. (The goodness of friendship consists in its conduciveness to pleasure.) There are Aristotelian naturalists who prefer (alleged) facts about human nature and human flourishing. (Friendship is good in that it is somehow consonant with human needs or human nature.) There are even theological naturalists, who think the goodness of friendship amounts to its being sanctioned by God. Naturalists, in short, resort to all sorts of supposed facts — sociological, psychological, scientific, even metaphysical and theological — so long as they are not driven back on a realm of irreducibly moral facts or properties. 2 Since some of these facts are metaphysical or supernatural, rather than natural in any ordinary sense of the word (facts about the natural world) you may well wonder how such a disparate group of moral theories came to wear the same label. The answer is historical. According to G. E. Moore they all stand accused of the naturalistic fallacy (of which, more later). He called this (supposed) fallacy naturalistic because it was more common among philosophers of a narrowly naturalistic stamp — those who wished to base morals on the kinds of facts that science could countenance. But these were only a subclass of those who — according to Moore — commit the fallacy. Nevertheless the name has stuck. What is the impetus behind naturalism — what makes it attractive as a theoretical option? This is a difficult question to deal with since naturalism is not so much a doctrine as a family of doctrines held together by some shared theses. But a rough answer is this. Naturalists combine a yen for moral truth, that is, a conviction that some things really are right and others wrong, with a distaste for Moore's non-natural qualities of goodness, badness etc. Often this distaste is due to the scientific outlook and the conviction that nothing exists beyond what science licenses us to suppose. But it can be due to religious convictions, e.g. the belief that value springs from God and cannot be separated from what he wills. Either way, Moore's peculiarly moral properties are unwelcome, and a reduction must be sought which bases moral truths on the preferred metaphysic. 3 1. Moral judgements are propositions. (They Non-cognitivism in its various forms (emotivism are true or false.) and prescriptivism) is false. 2. Some moral judgements are true. Nihilism or the 'error-theory' (due to J.L (Morality not a fiction.) Mackie) is false. 3.No irreducible moral facts or properties. Intuitionism(Moore's doctrine) is false. Figure 1 2. No-'ought'-from-'is', or the autonomy of ethics If morality can be boiled down to truths of some other kind, ethics is not 'autonomous'. Truth in morals is determined by the goings-on in some other realm. However, when naturalists and anti-naturalists quarrel about the autonomy of ethics, this is not (usually) what they have in mind. By 'the autonomy of ethics' they mean some such thesis as that 'ought' cannot be derived from 'is', or more generally that moral conclusions cannot be derived from non-moral premises, values from facts. This is often mixed up with the idea that moral words do not mean the same as non-moral words; that they lack 'naturalistic' synonyms. The issue is thus about inference rather than reduction; about what can be inferred from what. However, it is often assumed that if moral judgements can be derived from non-moral propositions, naturalism is true. If not, naturalism is false. This last claim is a mistake as I hope to show. Anti-naturalists take as their text a famous passage from Hume (1711-1776). Moralists (complains Hume) 'proceed for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning' with proofs 'of the being of God' or 'observations concerning human affairs', 'when of a sudden, I am surprised to find that instead of the usual copulations of propositions is and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not ... as this ought or ought not expresses some new relation or affirmation 'tis necessary that it be observed and explained; and at the same time a reason should be given for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others which are entirely different from it' (Hume, 1738, Book III, Part 1). This passage is often summed up in the slogan 'no-"ought"-from-"is"' and deified as 'Hume's Law'. It is alleged to do wonders — to point up a fundamental distinction between facts and values, to prove non- cognitivism and (above all) to refute naturalism. (This last is an odd claim, since Hume himself was a naturalist.) In fact it can do none of these things. For Hume is making a simple logical point. A conclusion containing 'ought' cannot (as a matter of logic) be derived from 'ought'-free premises. (The same, of course, goes for the other moral words.) Logic is conservative; the conclusions of a valid inference are contained 4 within the premises. You don't get out what you haven't put in. Hence if 'ought' appears in the conclusion of an argument but not in the premises, the inference is not logically valid. Some anti-naturalists (notably R. M. Hare) have taken this 'is'/'ought' gap as a datum and sought to explain it by means of non-cognitivism. The reason you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is', or, more generally, a moral conclusion from non-moral premises, is because moral judgements differ fundamentally from factual propositions. They don't (primarily) describe how the world is but prescribe how it should be — they are, in short, akin to orders. But we need not resort to non-cognitivism to explain this logical gulf. For there is a similar gap between conclusions about hedgehogs and premises which make no mention of them. You can't get 'hedgehog' conclusions from hedgehog-free premises (at least, not by logic alone). Yet nobody proposes a fact/hedgehog distinction or alleges that propositions about hedgehogs are not really propositions but a quaint subclass of commands. In both cases it is the conservativeness of logic that creates the gap, not any arcane difference in semantic kind. There is thus no more reason to convert moral judgements into quasi-commands than to subject hedgehog- propositions to the same fate. Ethics may be logically autonomous, but it shares this trait with every other kind of talk. But even this innocuous thesis has been challenged. A. N. Prior (1914-1969) proposed a number of logically valid inferences in which 'ought' does appear in the conclusion but not in the premises. Here is one: (1) Tea-drinking is common in England. Therefore (2) Either tea-drinking is common in England or all New Zealanders ought to be shot. (Prior, 1976) There is something very fishy about this inference.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Spinoza's Political Theory: Naturalism, Determinism And
    Open Journal of Philosophy, 2017, 7, 105-115 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp ISSN Online: 2163-9442 ISSN Print: 2163-9434 Spinoza’s Political Theory: Naturalism, Determinism and Institutionalism Jan-Erik Lane Public Policy Institute, Belgrade, Serbia How to cite this paper: Lane, J.-E. (2017). Abstract Spinoza’s Political Theory: Naturalism, De- terminism and Institutionalism. Open Jour- Spinoza has a formidable reputation as an abstract philosopher in the ratio- nal of Philosophy, 7, 105-115. nalist school of the 17th century. This standard image of him stems from his https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2017.72007 elegant Ethics, examining men and women with the Euclidean method of Received: March 25, 2017 axioms, corollaries and implications. He launched a fascinating theory about Accepted: May 24, 2017 moral naturalism and ethical determinism, much debated by other great phi- Published: May 27, 2017 losophers. However, he also has two political texts, one on religion and Copyright © 2017 by author and another on political regime. They are much more reader friendly and the ar- Scientific Research Publishing Inc. guments are simple, following from the foundations in Ethics. At least, Spi- This work is licensed under the Creative noza so believed. This paper presents systematically the political theory in Commons Attribution International Tractatus Politicus, which has received too little attention. License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access Keywords Naturalism, Determinism, Hobbes, Kierkegaard, Monarchy, Aristocracy and Democracy, Institutionalism and Choice 1. Introduction Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) dealt with general philosophy, the philosophy of re- ligion and political philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions John Deigh Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 4
    Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions John Deigh Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 4. (Jul., 1994), pp. 824-854. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-1704%28199407%29104%3A4%3C824%3ACITTOE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Z Ethics is currently published by The University of Chicago Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucpress.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri May 11 15:42:51 2007 SURVEY ARTICLE Cognitivism in the Theory of Emotions* John Deigh Cognitivism now dominates the philosophical study of emotions. Its ascendancy in this area parallels the ascendancy of cognitivism in the philosophy of mind generally. Yet the two trends have independent sources. In the philosophy of mind, cognitivism arose from unhappi- ness with the various behaviorist programs that prevailed at midcen- tury in psychology and philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction to Metaethics
    Introduction to Metaethics Introduction to Metaethics Felix Pinkert 103 Ethics: Metaethics, University of Oxford, Hilary Term 2015 Introduction to Metaethics What is Metaethics? 1 What is Metaethics? 2 A spectrum from more to less “objective” theories 3 Specifying Non-Cognitivism 4 How not to argue for Non-Cognitivism 5 Outline of the lectures 6 Discussion seminar 7 Notes Introduction to Metaethics What is Metaethics? Normative Language A: “Should I have stayed in bed instead of coming here?” B: “No, if you want to succeed in your degree, then you ought to go to the lectures.” A: “I think I should have slept in. And I don’t think you should take things so seriously. But since you do, it only serves you right that you have a reputation for caring about nothing but your studies.” Introduction to Metaethics What is Metaethics? B: “It is regrettable that you think so. But I don’t think that you have a right to judge the lectures before giving them a try.” C: “Indeed, you really shouldn’t believe just anything that other students have told you about the usefulness of going to lectures.” B: “Yes, and I think that we have a moral duty to make the best of the opportunities we have.” A: “Don’t even start talking about moral duties. It’s bad enough to get up early in the morning and have to endure the likes of you.” Introduction to Metaethics What is Metaethics? Asking meta-questions What do “should” and “ought” mean? If A says that you should do something, and B says that it’s not the case that you should, must one of them be right, and one wrong? If yes, what kind of fact makes their claims true or false? And how could we know who is right? Introduction to Metaethics What is Metaethics? Normativity and Morality “Ought” and related terms can have non-moral meaning: “You should arrive early if you want to get a good seat.” “Students shouldn’t just believe everything that’s on the slides.” “You shouldn’t feel disappointed – you should have expected this outcome.” Morality is a subset of normativity.
    [Show full text]
  • Jessica Moss Moss - Penultimate Draft Draft - Final -Version Final Versionforthcoming Forthcoming in Plato and the in Divided Plato Self, R
    Pictures and Passions in Plato JessicaJessica Moss Moss - penultimate draft draft - final -version final versionforthcoming forthcoming in Plato and the in Divided Plato Self, R. Barney, C. Brittain, T. Brennan eds, CUP 2011 and the Divided Self, R. Barney, C. Brittain, T. Brennan eds, CUP It is generally held that Plato's Republic gave ethical theory its first and most influential 2011 It is generally held that Plato's Republic gave ethical theory its firstphilosophical and most formulation influential of thephilosophical division between formulation reason and the ofpassions. the division If we look betweenclosely at reason the Republic and, however, the passions. one half of If that we division look isclosely surprisingly at thehard Republic,to find. however,Elsewhere one half in theof dialoguesthat division Plato groups is surprisingly together, and opposeshard to to find.rational Elsewhere in the dialogues Plato groups together, and opposes to calculation, a set of states that any modern philosopher would recognize as paradigm rational calculation, a set of states that any modern philosopher passions: anger, fear, pleasure, pain, lust, eros, and the like.1 At some points he even would recognize as paradigm passions: anger, fear, pleasure, pain, lust,refers eros, to them and as thepathe like.1 or pathemata, At some the Greekpoints roots he of even our ‘passions'. refers2 toWhen them we turnas patheto the or Republic pathemata,, we see that the these Greek states rootsare the ofdefinitive our ‘passions'.2 traits of the non-rational When weparts turnof to the thesoul, Republic,explaining their we distinctive see that characters, these statestheir inferiority are the to the definitive rational part, traits and of the non-rational parts of the soul, explaining their distinctive the necessity of keeping them under rational control.
    [Show full text]
  • Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: a Stoic-Platonic Synthesis Sarah Catherine Byers Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-01794-8 - Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine: A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis Sarah Catherine Byers Frontmatter More information Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine A Stoic-Platonic Synthesis This book argues that Augustine assimilated the Stoic theory of per- ception into his theories of motivation, affectivity, therapy for the pas- sions, and moral progress. Using his sermons to elucidate his treatises, Sarah Catherine Byers demonstrates how Augustine enriched Stoic cognitivism with Platonism to develop a fuller and coherent theory of action. That theory underlies his account of moral development, including his account of the mind’s reception of grace. By analyzing Augustine’s engagement with Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, Ambrose, Jerome, Origen, and Philo of Alexandria, as well as his impact on the debate between early modern theologians Bañez and Molina, Byers sheds new light on a major thinker of the early Christian world whose work is of critical importance for understanding key and recurring themes in Western philosophy. Sarah Catherine Byers is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston College. She has held research fellowships at the University of Notre Dame, the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, and Villanova University. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, the Review of Metaphysics, Augustine’s City of God (Cambridge Critical Guides series), A Companion to Augustine, and Augustinian
    [Show full text]
  • © 2013 University of Notre Dame © 2013 University of Notre Dame Minding the Modern Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge
    Minding the Modern © 2013 University of Notre Dame © 2013 University of Notre Dame MINDING the MODERN Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge THOMAS PFAU University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana © 2013 University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2013 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pfau, Thomas, 1960– Minding the modern : human agency, intellectual traditions, and responsible knowledge / Thomas Pfau. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-268-03840-3 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-268-03840-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Humanism. 2. Agent (Philosophy) 3. Philosophical anthropology. 4. Free will and determinism. 5. Humanities. I. Title. B821.P45 2013 190—dc23 2013022543 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. © 2013 University of Notre Dame CONTENTS List of Abbreviations vii Exordium: Modernity’s Gaze 1 PART I. PROLEGOMENA 1 Frameworks or Tools? On the Status of Concepts in 9 Humanistic Inquiry 2 Forgetting by Remembering: Historicism and the Limits of 35 Modern Knowledge 3 “A large mental field”: Intellectual Traditions and Responsible 53 Knowledge after Newman PART II. RATIONAL APPETITE: AN EMERGENT CONCEPTUAL TRADITION 4 Beginnings: Desire, Judgment, and Action in Aristotle and the Stoics 79 5 Consolidation: St. Augustine on Choice, Sin, and the Divided Will 108 6 Rational Appetite and Good Sense: Will and Intellect in Aquinas 133 7 Rational Claims, Irrational Consequences: Ockham Disaggregates 160 Will and Reason © 2013 University of Notre Dame vi Contents PART III.
    [Show full text]
  • HOW to STAND up for NON-COGNITIVISTS John O'leary-Hawthorne and Huw Price Is Non-Cognitivism Compatible with Minimalism About
    Published in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74(1996) 275-292. HOW TO STAND UP FOR NON-COGNITIVISTS John O’Leary-Hawthorne and Huw Price Is non-cognitivism compatible with minimalism about truth? A contemporary argument claims not, and therefore that moral realists, for example, should take heart from the popularity of semantic minimalism. The same is said to apply to cognitivism about other topics—conditionals, for example—for the argument depends only on the fact that ordinary usage applies the notions of truth and falsity to utterances of the kind in question. Given this much, minimalism about truth is said to leave no room for the view that the utterances concerned are non-cognitive in nature.1 In this paper we want to derail this fast-track route to cognitivism. We want to show that with a proper understanding of what is essential to non-cognitivism, the position turns out to be largely untouched by the adoption of any of a range of minimalist views about truth. The issue as to the nature of non-cognitivism is crucial, however, and we begin in §I below by defending a broader characterisation of the position than is common in contemporary literature. The nature of minimalism also calls for clarification, and in §II we distinguish two importantly different strands which are both prominent in contemporary debates. Against this background, we go on to explore two possible strategies for standing up for non-cognitivism in the face of minimalism. One of these strategies has been propounded in a recent paper by Frank Jackson, Graham Oppy and Michael Smith.2 It turns on the idea that minimalism about truth is quite compatible with a non-minimalism about truth-aptness, and that the latter can be used to ground non-cognitivism.
    [Show full text]
  • Naturalizing Ethics
    2 Naturalizing Ethics OWEN FLANAGAN, HAGOP SARKISSIAN, AND DAVID WONG Introduction In this chapter we provide (1) an argument for why ethics should be naturalized, (2) an analysis of why it is not yet naturalized, (3) a defense of ethical naturalism against two fallacies – Hume and Moore’s – that it allegedly commits, and (4) a proposal that normative ethics is best conceived as part of human ecology committed to pluralistic relativism (Flanagan 1995; 2002; Wong 1984; 1996; 2006b). The latter substantive view, supported by a neocompatibilist view of human agency, constitutes the essence of Duke naturalism. It provides a credible substantive alternative to bald or eliminativist Australian ethical natu- ralism, especially one that supports moral skepticism (Mackie), and to the more reticent Pittsburgh naturalism.1 Naturalism in the Broad Sense Ethical naturalism is a variety of a broader philosophical naturalism, so it will be good to say what naturalism in the broad sense is. According to the OED, the original philosophical meaning of the term “naturalism” dates back to the 17th century and meant “a view of the world, and of man’s relation to it, in which only the operation of natural (as opposed to supernatural or spiritual) laws and forces is admitted or assumed.” 1 McDowell coined the term “bald naturalism” (McDowell 1996) and sometimes characterizes it in a way that engenders or is akin to moral skepticism. In principle, a naturalist might be a moral skeptic, believing that there are no moral properties as ordinarily conceived and thus that moral propositions are literally false (or meaning- less).
    [Show full text]
  • Monism and Pluralism: the History of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Architecture - Part I Paul Guyer
    Monism and Pluralism: The History of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Architecture - Part I Paul Guyer I. Monism and Pluralism in the Early History of Aesthetics One way to think about the history of aesthetics since its inception as a properly named subdiscipline of philosophy in the early eighteenth century is to think of it as a debate about the right way to understand the relations among the terms of the Neo-Platonist triad comprised by the true, the good, and the beautiful: do these terms designate three separate domains of human interest, the theoretical, the practical and moral, and the aesthetic, the boundaries between which must be sharply defined and maintained, or do they designate three aspects of human experience that can and should be fused in practice, indeed do they suggest that the distinctive function of art among human activities is precisely to fuse our natural love of beauty with our theoretical and moral concerns, to provide a kind of unity in human experience that we otherwise do not find?1 Immanuel Kant might be thought to be the foremost of separatists rather than synthesizers in the modern history of aesthetics: his definition in the “Analytic of the Beautiful” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment of the “judgment of taste” as “aesthetic,” where that means that it is neither cognitive nor practical, that on the one hand “In order to decide whether or not something is beautiful, we do not relate the representation by means of understanding to the object for cognition”2 and that on the other hand “The agreeable,
    [Show full text]
  • Freedom from Passions in Augustine
    UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI FACULTY OF THEOLOGY FINLAND FREEDOM FROM PASSIONS IN AUGUSTINE Gao Yuan 高 源 ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki in Lecture Hall 13, University Main Building, on 4 November 2015, at 12 noon Helsinki 2015 ISBN 978-951-51-1625-3 (paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-1626-0 (PDF) Copyright © Gao Yuan (高源) https://ethesis.helsinki.fi/en Cover: Wang Rui and Gao Yuan Juvenes Print Oy Helsinki 2015 ABSTRACT This study presents a general overview of Augustine’s insights into passions as well as his approach to the therapy of emotions and their sanctification. Attending to various phases of his writings, this work explores the systematic structure of Augustine’s tenets on passions and on the freedom from passions in the context of his philosophical and theological convictions on the issue of amor sui and amor Dei. The analysis begins by examining Augustine’s language of passions and the doctrinal connections between Augustine and his predecessors. I provide a survey of Augustine’s usage of emotional terms and criticise the position that Augustine suggested a dichotomy between passio and affectus as well as the claim that none of Augustine’s Latin terms can be justifiably translated by the modern term “emotion”. On the basis of terminological and doctrinal observations, I clarify the general features of Augustine’s psychology of passions in Chapter 2. In addressing the issue of how Augustine transformed his predecessors’ therapy of passions and their ideal of freedom from emotion into his theological framework in Chapter 3, I examine a series of related concepts, such as propatheia, metriopatheia, apatheia and eupatheia, to determine how he understood them in various stages of his philosophical and theological thinking.
    [Show full text]
  • A Further Reinterpretation of the Moral Philosophy of John Stuart Mill
    A FURTHER REINTERPRETATION OF THE MORAL PHILOSOPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. by Derek Jo Banks M.A.9 University of Glasgow, 1970 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Philosophy 0 DEREK JOHN BANKS 1972 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY January 1972 Name : Derek J. Banks !iiitlc of '.thesis : li ir'urther deinterpretation of the Floral I'hilosophy of John ,Stuart Mill Examining Cornrni-ttee : Chairman: Kay Jennings """ Lionel Kenner Senior Supervisor P "-" Donald G. Brown Lxt ernal Axaminer &of essor of 'hilosophy University of British Columbia I ABSTRACT Those of Mill's critics who focus their attention on Utilitarianism assume that Mill must have held that certain ethical sentences, including one expressing the principle of utility, are properly describable as true. In this thesis I set out to demonstrate the spuriousness of this assumption. I begin by showing that in several important works - works which he thought much more highly of than he did Utilitarianism - Mill denied that the truth (or falsity) of any ethical sentences can ever be established. Next I produce evidence that his reason for this denial lies in his commitment to the view that ethical sentences are really disguised imperative sentences, and hence have no truth-value. Pinally, it is argued that there is nothing in Utilitarianism that is inconsistent with the meta-ethical position which we have found him to adopt in his other works related to ethics. In a short coneluding chapter I devote as much space as I deem permissible in a thesis of this type to show that reinterpretation of Mill's ethical theory on an imperative model renders it more plausible than it is generally taken to be, since all theories which allow truth-values to ethical sentences are open to knock-down objections.
    [Show full text]
  • From Nature As Source to Nature As Ethos the Making of Natural Man In
    From Nature as Source to Nature as Ethos The Making of Natural Man in Rousseau’s Dialogues Marco di Palma (University College, London) Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. (October 1999) ProQuest Number: 10608884 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10608884 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 fo r Miriam Abstract Challenging Jean Starobinski’s critique of Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, Dialogues, this thesis locates arguments for the Rousseauian synthesis and its ideal of Natural Man in the philosophies of nature, habit and the will. Rousseau’s concept of nature represents both a given, timeless inheritance or moral source, but also a unity which individuals actualise through reason and acts of the ethical will. The philosophy of habit suggested in Emile eliminates the concepts of demturation and second nature invoked by commentators to clarify the relation between nature and habit. Authentic, permanent habits disclose nature; nature transcends itself through habit. A philosophy of the will, meanwhile, specifies the enlightened initiatives that fulfil the human telos, sponsoring the Form nature assumes through habit The modalities of nature, habit and will thereby establish a continuity between the natural and ethical selves.
    [Show full text]